First time posting so bear with me here. I am an event partner and mentor and my students expressed their disgust for waiting in long lines for skills at larger events. This happens at our events, even when we have 3 or 4 fields running skills. Teams have to sit in line, with the robot, and wait for their turn. No one likes waiting in lines.
Has anyone operated or interacted with a software solution that would allow teams to line up in a digital queue and then be notified via text, email, or something that a skills field is ready for them to do their run? My initial thought goes to the restaurant industry and the digital reservation system. Has anyone tried this for skills before? I could see this being a benefit to teams because they could be fixing their robots, testing in practice fields, or even getting judged at their pit while holding their spot in the skills queue.
Thanks for reading. I look forward to hearing your feedback.
I think using a digital queueing system could be great. One of the events I’ve gone for just asks one team member to line up for a team, which makes it easier for the skills referee/queuer to communicate with teams since that one team member could probably get ahold of the rest of their team easily. I think that there may be some events that use a time slotting system for skills but I’m not too sure how that is implemented.
I would love this idea. You can use those little vibrator things from those hamburger chains that vibrate when your order is ready.
However, if the teams are not close to the skills field, then it may increase turnover time as you have to wait for the team to walk over with all their stuff
I’ll post an unpopular idea. Teams show up with a quick setup ritual. I’ve seen teams spend close to 3 minutes getting plugged in, setting the robot and then telling the referee they were ready. If you need two alignment gauges, a sextant shoot of where the stars are and making a sacrifice to Hermes the God of science and technology, you need to streamline that.
I had that thought too. Teams could be notified when they reach 3rd in line, 2nd in line, next up, etc., and then get notified what field they would be on (for multi-field setups). This would give teams adequate warning to get closer to the skills fields to limit wasted time.
I’ve thought about this a decent amount. I think there would be a lot of benefit, but there are a couple of considerations:
How do you ensure that a team shows up at their assigned time? If a team no-shows, do you need a standby line?
How do you make sure that the students/robots are waiting in line? Can a team be “in the skills line” if they are playing in a match?
Could you use a similar system to schedule judging interviews?
I do like the aspect of it serving as a forcing function to help ensure teams do their skills runs (and don’t rush the line 5 minutes before skills close)
Also EP/mentor and frustrated on both sides. Must say not a fan of this system of selecting teams to Worlds from the States event skills list and not from the World Skills Standing after all events are finished as it was done in some distant past. What I notice is a very unfriendly situation at States simply because it is so cut throat and everyone is trying every social engineering angle to get all 6 attempts and their skills up at THAT event because nothing else they did during the entire season really matters (unless you’re top 10 worldwide of course). I saw teams of 10 holding spots in line and running all their 6 attempts just because they are many and have pelican cases with robots they roll around while 1-3 people teams were kicked out of the line because their robot was at the queuing table or at the pits being patched up and they could not do half of their legal runs (no robot get out seems to be the accepted policy in our region). They simply stand no chance because while sitting in that long line with the robot, at some point they must leave the line to go play a match. I have seen teams with exceptionally high scores all season long on their States section of the World Skills Standings do poorly at the one event it really mattered simply because their team of 3 had to go do a match and they were not allowed to have a person hold the line for them and the one time they made it to the end of the line their robot disconnected from the field and did not move so they were given a score of 0 and sent back to the end of the line. It’s just not pleasant. But I guess all this is for another thread another time another place.
Yes, a restaurant / DMV / reservation system baked into the Tournament Manager ecosystem would be so welcoming. Also the system must ensure that people who could not come to the field for some time while holding a reservation (because they had to go judge, play a match or fix robot) are not penalized.
At the last event I ran me and my co-EP considered investing in one of those restaurant devices with vibrating/LED slates but ran into budget and logistics issues. Something like this: Wireless-Restaurant-Buzzers-Queuing
A digital/pager system could work, but I worry that we’d still have the problem of teams being queued for a match or in a match when they were paged. I’m sure this could be worked out, but we might need a designated skills “host” to manage it. Sometimes an extra volunteer is hard to find.
I just helped run a 60 team regional competition with 2 skills fields and we could have used at least one more field. The main competition was a single division with 2 field sets of 2 fields each (4 total). That meant that just over half the teams were at a field or a expected in a queue. Add in interview time and there wasn’t much time left for skills.
To help alleviate the time crunch we allowed (for the first time) team members to hold a spot in the skills line without the robot. Overall, it helped. I’m sure the unfortunate team member stuck alone in line was occasionally bored, but teams were understanding and happy they had this opportunity. It alleviated some of stress for them. When a skills field was ready it went to the next robot in line. Sometimes this was from the front of the line, but occasionally we went 12 teams deep into the line to find a robot.
Yup exactly. Then there’s the question of what do you do with that poor no. 36 who just got buzzed but then no. 8 no. 12 and no. 34 show up saying they were first but had to go play matches? Also not sure if those things are designed to be carried around all day although marketing claim is “Each receiver has a built-in 200mAh rechargeable lithium battery, Approximate standby time of up to a full day.” Salt grains. One thing we worried about was team gets a pager and then gives it to someone else. Sure you can put stickers with their team no on them. Looks fancy but still needs to be managed just the same way as the idea of teams putting their license plates down or simply giving away little pieces of paper. The only great thing about the pager gadget is that it alerts team so it eliminates person having to announce on mic and/or volunteer chasers.
I really hope by brainstorming here we can figure something out that works…
Unpopular? I’d love to see a time limit on setup.
At the event I just mentioned in another reply, we ran 168 skills attempts on 2 field in somewhere under 6 hours (there were a few technical problems that delayed us a time or two. The attempts were split over 53 teams (of 59 possible). We shut off skills at the end of qualification with about 15+ teams in line. This sounds like a lot, but there was quite a bit of wasted time.
Most teams had reasonable setup times, but a few took a long time to align things. Some insisted they were ready, but had to have someone run in a battery, air compressor, etc. A few even plugged in to download code while at the field. We’d pull them off if it was too long, but the time damage was already done.
Towards the end of the day, I got the impression that a few of the teams near the top of the rankings may have been intentionally going slow (setup and reset) to limit additional attempts by other teams.
Ohhhh that’s why were were deduced 5 points for safety at regionals (sorry John but your cat went to a good cause).
Anyways… I like the idea of using the buzzers to alert a team to come to the field when they are in like #3 in line. It may be a little complicated, but some software could be programmed with the master schedule to automatically make a side queue for people in a quals match.
I’m an EP. At the last few local tournaments, this is what we have been doing- Each team gets a medallion with their team number on a necklace at check in. One student per team wears the necklace in the skills line. When they get close to the front of the line, they text the rest of their team to come with the robot. It has worked reasonably well, although I do like the idea of buzzers, or perhaps an app that would alert teams that it’s almost their turn,
I second the app idea. This seems like an inexpensive, solid solution that doesn’t force events to invest even more money into something like a buzzer that elementary/middle/high schoolers could easily misplace.
Here’s what they did at IOT. One member from each team in the line had to help with reset. Teams were motivated to reset quickly and it reduced the amount of volunteers needed at skills.
However, I do agree that a solution to the skills line is needed.
The app seems slightly unreasonable. What if no team members have phones with data? What if they accidentally put it on silent?
